White House Preparing Warming Treaty

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, February 5, 2002

The White House is preparing a go-slow alternative to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, administration officials said Wednesday.

President Bush, who leaves next Saturday for a five-day tour through Japan, Korea and China, is awaiting a formal recommendation from the Cabinet-level working group he tasked with finding an alternative approach after he rejected the Kyoto accord last spring.

"The president has not received its recommendations and has not made a decision at this time," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Wednesday.

According to a report by the president's economic advisers, the Bush administration wants to index the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to economic activity so that emission targets could expand or shrink with economic growth. Such indexing would also, in theory, allow for greater emissions by nations _ primarily, the United States _ that produce more of the world's goods and services.

"A gradual approach balances the need for mitigation with the need for economic growth to power future innovation," the president's Council of Economic Advisers said in its annual report on the U.S. economy, released this week.

"A gradual approach also allows us to adjust as we learn more from the science and are able to take advantage of technologies as they develop. … Institutionally, it is important to learn to walk before trying to run," the CEA report said.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol negotiated by the Clinton administration calls on about 40 industrialized nations to cut to fixed levels the carbon dioxide emissions that are believed to cause global warming.

Japanese officials are still weighing whether to pursue ratifying the treaty since the United States, under Bush, pulled out of the agreement.

Administration officials privately acknowledged that the White House would like to give the Japanese some indication of its emissions policies before Bush travels there next week.

The working group _ Cabinet secretaries from the departments of Commerce, Energy, Treasury, State, Interior, Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency _ met on Monday to finalize its recommendations and does not plan to meet again before Bush's Feb. 16 departure for Tokyo.

The group's alternative proposal was originally meant to be finalized last fall, before the Sept. 11 attacks sidelined global warming deliberations and postponed Bush's Asian tour until this month.

The administration is also looking for ways _ "incentives, voluntary challenges or public recognition" _ to encourage businesses and individuals to reduce pollution, according to the CEA study.